Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Duffing About Duffy Square

Last weekend, my wife and I took the Megabus up to New York to see Blithe Spirit with the ever sexy Angela Lansbury. We took the early 7:30 bus which got us up there in time to have a leisurely lunch with sangria and still have an hour to kill before we had to mosey over to the theater. Since it was a beautiful Spring day we decided to hang out on the Duffy Square steps to nowhere they have built over the TKTS booth.

This is a near perfect people watching place. To kill the time I decided to discreetly take candid shots of the other tourists hanging around with me. As always, I've made a Flickr set, but here are some of my favorites with some additional commentary.

The primary purpose of being in Duffy Square is to buy the half price tickets at the TKTS booth. Here two girls are reading the list of what is available "on the board." If you were there on Saturday you could have seen the Off-Broadway production of Rooms, which we saw in DC a few months ago.

If you can't decide what you want to see, there are usually some hawkers handing out fliers for some of the older shows. There were two girls in red tights and bowler hats pimping Chicago. I don't know how well they were selling the show, but the girls were very popular as lots of folks just wanted to have their picture taken with them.

The great thing about Times Square is that wandering around holding a camera is seen as perfectly natural. One of my meta-quirks is that I like taking pictures of people taking pictures. I snapped these guys just as their flash went off, creating that cool flare look. If you look at the full size version, you can see where I photoshopped out somebody's hand.

And I was hardly the only person taking pictures of random strangers. These two had some serious gear. Here they are watching the Chicago girls posing with the guy in the picture above. And they weren't the only ones with serious camera equipment. Both photo and video.

And where there are cameras, there are buskers, none more famous than the Naked Cowboy (first mentioned by me here) who stands around posing with people's wives, mothers, girlfriends, and teenage daughters while groping their asses and getting paid for it. But he has a rare gift. A boxer in red underoos and a Statue of Liberty lady were doing terrible business.

And if you get tired of reading, the top of the stairs makes for the best place around to take a nap.

The cutest kid in Times Square was in no need of a nap. This little toddler ran his mom and dad ragged as he climbed up and down the steps while they tried to keep an eye out on him while snapping photos of him looking adorable.

Most everybody ignored me as I took their picture but this woman on the Duffy Square steps kept eying me suspiciously. I think she was just worried about some creepy stranger approaching her. Hey, what's the fun of having a camera if you can't take pictures of beautiful women?